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How to avoid the software salary ceiling

thinkfaster.co

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Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#61

Post by soham »

In other words, your worth is equal to your replacement cost. Specialization helps because of demand/supply dichotomy.

There is another option; grossly unpopular, but I have to lay it out: make a career in startups. You'll eventually land with one or two that work out very well. That may not increase your yearly salary, but it increases your overall payout over a decade, because you'll get a windfall or two.

How? As you keep working for startups, some will fail and some will succeed, in different ways. Eventually, you'll learn how to recognize the more promising ones. Are there any guarantees? No. But there are no guarantees in any path.

(Link to my bit more detailed answer on Quora: http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-increase-my-income-as-a-softw...)

[About me: Software Engineer by education and trade. Been in the valley for several years. Early employee at Box, left last year as their Director of Engineering. Now run http://InterviewKickstart.com. We've trained a lot of people on how to prepare for technical interviews, the right way, the no-shortcuts way]

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#62

Post by eeprom1 »

FigBug wrote: post #46
sammyo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with a narrow specialty in Tech is that the lucrative niche can evaporate almost overnight.

Yes if you specialize in a specific technology. Not as much if you specialize in something more fundamental like audio DSP. you may have to jump between telephony and pro audio as the markets change, but there will always be work. And the barrier to entry is quite high.

Your working conditions and pay don't depend on how bad ass your specialty sounds, or how technically complicated the work is. They depend on the total supply of people who can do the work compared to the total amount of work that needs doing.

There's no escape for grown-up computer programmers. This thread covered the situation pretty well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9361580

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#63

Post by discardorama »

Unfortunately, the author does not offer much to actually answer the question posed by the title.

He does complain about the whiteboarding during interviews, and would prefer to be taken at his word about his past experience. As an older engineer (much older than the author, I might add), I can understand the feeling; however, in my years of experience, I have seen too many people coast on their former laurels and contribute, basically, nothing to the day-to-day business of the company. They can talk a mean talk, but never deliver anything of value. They sure are quick to jump on a hot idea once it's proven out and take credit, though!

So is whiteboarding the best way to higher people? I don't know; but I think it is a good way to keep the slackers _out_.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#65

Post by dj_doh »

I second this wholeheartedly. Unless you are specialized in some vertical with locally or nationally recognized skills, you are going to hit the ceiling. I'm not commanding 200-300K salary yet. But story is true for someone earning 150-160K. It seems like 150K is the beginning of the ceiling.

From a company's point of view, it's legit to not offer high salary for individuals with generic skills and experiences. They can always hire 2 at the cost 1 engineer. Then pay thru slower productivity, buggy software, inefficient architecture and so on.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#66

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

dudul wrote: post #38
ben336 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And as I stated, a manager should not necessarily make more money than the people they manage. "Should not" is very different than "does not". In reality, managers almost always make more

Agreed. Mostly because managers are in charge of hiring and they would not hire someone reporting to them and making more than them.

I doubt that has anything to do with it. I've known at least one manager in the position of hiring developers who made far more than she did.

In the end, you have to do your job. If that job requires that you hire people making more than you, tough!

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#67

Post by AdrianRossouw »

dangero wrote: post #17
EGreg wrote: post #6

Or just be a CONSULTANT and raise your rates usng the wealth of information like patio11. Seriously, FTE is considered "the" way to fo by far too many people. Is it really that hard to manage your own health insurance plan and deduct taxes?

I've been working as a consultant for a number of years and I think the biggest difference is the inconsistent salary. As I recall there was a recent poll someone posted on HN and that was the main reason people don't go into consulting. Consulting also suits a certain type of person because it's a hustling game. You can always make more, but that means there's no light to flip off at 5pm.

I found that switching to consulting, and charging a day rate is the first time that it finally clicked for me that I need to stop after 8 hours.

by working longer hours, i was reducing the value of my time. I was also reducing the value I provided in those hours.

So it ended up giving me more balance than working a salary job.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#68

Post by fleshshelf »

I'm much less stressed about this after I realized it doesn't take more than 10-15 years of saving to become financially independent. It's seriously stressful to know you have to find a career that can sustain you until 65. Many people seem to have problems fairly early in their tech careers, with rampant ageism etc. So I plan on being FI by 45, preferably 40. So liberating to know my current job could be my last.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#69

Post by fleshshelf »

I'm much less stressed about this after I realized it doesn't take more than 10-15 years of saving to become financially independent. It's seriously stressful to know you have to find a career that can sustain you until 65. Many people seem to have problems fairly early in their tech careers, with rampant ageism etc. So I plan on being FI by 45, preferably 40. So liberating to know my current job could be my last.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#70

Post by frozenport »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #40
frozenport wrote: post #27

We should have a discussion about default SQL connectivity limits and the problems with using persistent connections. There seems to be a ripe opportunity to make something similar to Amazon RDS, except with automatic scaling. The current version of RDS presents the user with different instance sizes and doesn't automatically scale during high CPU loads.

I believe your comment is for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845820 ?

The page was showing a `DATABASE ERROR: CONNECTION FAILED!`
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